


I Can Fix That

by Badwolf36



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: 5 Things, 5 Times, 5+1 Things, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Engineers, Exhaustion, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Massage, Medical, Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, Post-Star Trek (2009), Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:09:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23587423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Badwolf36/pseuds/Badwolf36
Summary: Five times Bones said, "I can fix that" and one time someone else said it.
Relationships: Christine Chapel & Leonard "Bones" McCoy, James T. Kirk & Leonard "Bones" McCoy, James T. Kirk & Winona Kirk, James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Comments: 12
Kudos: 155





	I Can Fix That

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly think this was the first Star Trek fanfic I ever wrote, but it appears I never posted it. So, uh, enjoy!

They step out of the shuttle into a foggy San Francisco morning.

As he'd been warned, the man Jim had decided to call Bones had thrown up on Jim, but he mostly kept it to his shoes and Jim really couldn't have said much about his appearance in the first place since his shirt was still crusted with dried blood.

"Sorry," Bones said gruffly once he'd stumbled out of the shuttle, gripping his spread knees as he leaned over the grassy lawn.

"Don't worry about it," Jim said, wiping off his shoes the best he could on the grass. Most of the cadets had been herded off by the stern-looking officer who had yanked McCoy from the bathroom. Jim had just jerked a thumb at the man stumbling over to the grass and then himself before she rolled her eyes and moved off, shoving a slow-moving red uniform-clad cadet before her.

Absently, Jim dabbed at his nose with his ruined shirt. The atmospheric changes of the shuttle ride had wreaked happy havoc on him and he was still trying to decide if there was a hairline fracture lurking there. He wondered what was taking Pike so long to leave the shuttle.

Suddenly, he had a face full of scruffy, bad-smelling crazy person. "Come on, " Bones said, gripping his face with gentle hands, even if the gleam of crazy was strong. "I've been promised that there's something like a legitimate medical facility at the end of this tin can hell."

Jim blinked very slowly. "Oookay."

The crazy went away just a little as the man once again fished out his flask and offered Jim the last swallow before gently manipulating his nose.

"I'm a doctor. I can fix that."

************

Jim ended up rooming with Bones his second month at the Academy after some judicious hacking by Jim and some disgruntled roommates on both sides of the equation.

It wasn’t the best of arrangements. They sniped constantly, about everything from messes to laundry to cooking, but most of the time it was more fun than serious. They get drunk (a lot) and into bar brawls (less and less as time goes on.)

Bones told Jim about Joanna and Jim confirmed that he was _that_ Jim Kirk. They're both hammered so it's just something they nod at and move on from. (Although Jim somehow made sure he got an uninterrupted hour on the comm with Joanna for her birthday).

So it was in their seventh month of cohabitation when Jim got a comm from his mother. Bones, as he has resigned himself to being called, was in the room when the unknown number popped up on the screen. Jim winked at him, explaining it was probably the cute Andorian from last night's bar begging for more.

But when Jim answered and an older woman came on screen, he was around to see Jim's face go white and his voice go small and nervous, as he said, "Hi Mom." It's something Bones didn't think he'd ever see on the face of the brash young cadet who'd somehow become part of his life.

He knew bits and pieces about Winona Kirk. Some were from the history books and others from Jim, tiny bits of information he dropped into conversation like breadcrumbs. The general impression he got was that she was a good officer who suffered a terrible loss and never really recovered from it. The picture Jim painted with all the little tidbits Bones has collected is that the woman had tried to be a good mother to her sons. But Jim had once let slip in a moment of solitude and solemn drunkenness that he was convinced his mother couldn't look at him without seeing her dead husband and wishing, just wishing, that one was in place of the other.

Bones left the room because he understood all about family and guilt and the heavy emotions that sat in the pit of your stomach until you were sure they were going to eat their way through it. He didn't go far though, because he knew there was a difference between privacy and being alone.

Jim stumbled out into the common room fifteen minutes later, still bloodless and impossibly young. "She...I can't..." He stopped and started a few times before giving up, looking, not helpless, because that wasn’t like him, but close.

Bones held up his best bottle of bourbon and two bottles of Jim's Bud Classics that he'd squirreled out of the room.

"I can fix that," he said, and the grateful look he got made him think he really could.

************

"I can fix that. I can fix that. Damn it, Jim, you better hold on long enough for me to fix you up so I can kill you again!"

He's yelling at Jim, who's unconscious and bleeding out under his hands and he hasn't been this angry since, well, since the last time this happened, which is a more frequent occurrence than he can bear to look at most days.

"Chapel!" he yelled, but she was already there, handing him the tools he needed to keep Jim's viscera inside of him.

"You can fix him," she said, the confidence in her tone born from experience with McCoy's expertise and the attitude that came from time spent serving under Jim "Nobody Left Behind" Kirk's captaincy.

So he does.

***********

Jim talked about everything (save what really bothered him or what his nightmares were about), so Bones got a lot of information he didn't really want.

For instance, Bones was the first to hear exactly what Orions were like in bed.

He was also the first to see what a case of Cardassian Clap looked like on a human when Jim crowded him into his office in Sickbay, locked the door with his command code, then dropped his trousers.

He laughed. He couldn't help it. It was unprofessional, but Jim seemed to see no issue with running fast and loose with the regulations, so he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Jim crossed his arms and glared at him, but he didn't pull up his pants first, which just made Bones laugh harder.

"As my CMO, I expect you to fix this," Jim said in his best 'Captain' voice.

Bones wiped tears from his eyes as he managed to respond, "Yeah. *hic* I can fix that. God, only you, Jim."

Jim continued to glare at him.

"This wasn't my fault!" he exclaimed, tossing up his hands.

Bones just stared at him before breaking down into very unmanly giggles.

"How could it possibly not be?" Bones finally forced out, biting his knuckles to try to get some semblance of control over himself.

"Well," Jim wheedled. "She was really hot."

"And...?"

Jim just stared at him like that should explain everything.

It was too much for Bones, who slid to the floor in a heap, laughing until tears poured down his face.

"I hate you," Jim said succinctly as he pulled up his pants.

******************

They lost 15 crew members today.

Three of them died under his hands.

Two of them died on M'Benga's table.

The rest were dead before they ever got to them.

It was an attack. Some cruiser that dropped out of warp right on top of them and opened fire without any provocation.

Three decks were still depressurized, but the absolute panic had ebbed away, making room for sorrow and grief.

It'd been 72 hours since Leonard had seen his own bed.

But he couldn't go off duty yet.

The CMO's first duty was to his patients and his first patient was the Captain.

And he knew Jim had been on duty longer than he had.

So he stripped out of his bloody scrubs, took a quick sonic shower and pulled on a new uniform before grabbing his medical kit and heading for the bridge.

He got weak smiles from most of the bridge crew as he stepped from the turbolift.

Jim looked up, but it was slow, way too slow.

"Casualty report, Dr. McCoy?" he asked, a beat slow for a normal person. It was three beats slow for James T. “Could Make A Hummingbird Jealous of His Energy Levels” Kirk.

It's not what he came up here for, but it was part of his job as well, so he reeled off the numbers.

Jim shut his eyes and didn't open them for a long time.

Bones took the moment to scan him with his tricorder. He didn't bother with the rest of the bridge crew because Jim had gotten good at managing people during a crisis. They'll be a little banged up, but they'll have gotten their injuries treated. They'll have taken naps or eaten. They'll be tired, but not to the level of their captain.

And Jim was tired.

His hormone levels were off the charts and the rest of his stats weren't much better.

The gold-shirted man shifted in his chair eventually and it was the Captain part of him that opened his eyes and started issuing orders. He called up the relief crews, coordinated the repair teams to begin repressurizing the decks and compiling the damage reports. He finally handed over the conn to Spock when the Vulcan pointed out that he had followed the Captain's orders and gotten some rest, making him fit for duty again.

It was Jim who creaked to his feet and gave a wan smile to his best friend.

He walked to the turbolift slowly, and McCoy followed.

Just like he always did.

Jim managed to wait until the doors had closed before he slumped bonelessly against the back wall.

"Tired," he murmured.

"Yeah, I'll bet you're tired," Bones agreed, but Jim shook his head.

"Tired of losing people," he said, looking at Bones with fever-bright blue eyes.

Leonard did not feel something choking its way up his throat at seeing the pain in his friend's eyes.

Really, he didn't.

"I know, kid."

The turbolift stopped and Jim straightened, putting on authority like a uniform.

It only lasted until he was safely inside his quarters with his command code locking it behind him, but it was enough to soothe some of the tense lines on the faces of junior and senior crew members alike that they passed.

Bones stood by as Jim thumped heavily into a sitting position on his bed, burying his face in his hands.

"Tired," he said again through spread fingers that were nicked and burnt in some places, probably from an exploding console. "Need sleep."

"So go to bed," McCoy said, already expecting the response. Jim had gotten better at admitting when he needed help and paying attention to some of his own needs, but sometimes the younger man didn’t know what to do with that knowledge or how to accept the help that his crew so willingly offered.

"Can't," Jim said plaintively. "Just...can't."

Bones deftly slotted the cartridge into the hypospray at his side before moving to sit beside Jim on the bed. He'd been hoping not to use it, but Leonard McCoy had never really relied on hope.

"I can fix that," he said quietly as he gently pushed the hypospray into Jim's neck and pushed the release.

Jim turned to him with an undefinable look in his eyes: part sorrow, part betrayal and something that looked like affection (or at least the knowledge that _someone_ cared about him.) Then his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell heavily against Leonard's side, away from the world.

Bones gathered him up in his arms and held him close.

Later, he would get their boots off and get them under the covers.

Later, he would pull Jim's still form close as he lay propped against the pillows and run a hand through Jim's hair until the deep lines on his face lessened.

Later, he would grieve for the crewmembers he had lost and help Jim do the same, then push the both of them to begin helping the crew.

But that was for later.

For now, he simply held on.

***************

Leonard H. McCoy was not having a good day.

Actually, that was an understatement.

Leonard H. McCoy was having a _miserable_ day.

He'd slept through his alarm to wake him up for Alpha shift and had to skip breakfast once the computer finally managed to rouse him approximately one minute before he had to be presentable and in charge of his domain. Then, when he'd tried to get the replicator in his office to spit out something, nutritional value or no (flavor or no either), it had instead decided to ooze gray sludge in a never-ending stream.

And, to make it better, Engineering was in the middle of its daily crisis. So there was no one to spare to fix the replicator and their supply of bed pans to contain the mess was rapidly dwindling. Added to that was the odd engineer being carried in unconscious and dumped on a biobed by his or her fellows before racing back to their posts.

Not to mention that Jim was on an away mission to Ceti VI with Uhura, so something he refused to call worry (it was professional wariness given his commanding officer's track record, damnit!) was tying his empty gut into knots.

His newest nurse also couldn't read a hypospray label to save his life (or anyone else's for that matter.)

"Congratulations, Janson," McCoy said, acid tongue wagging as his Gram used to say. "If you had given this to Ensign Harris here," he gestured to the hypospray he'd snatched from Janson's hand before he could give it to the Betazed officer, "he would have been dead in under a minute. Now, I know you passed the eyesight requirement, so care to tell me what species of Melvarran mud flea you're descended from so I can alert the New Vulcan Science Academy and they can bring you in for a genealogical study?"

He paused to take breath as Janson cowered by a biobed. But before he could really lay into his hapless nurse and let off some of the day's frustration, Christine Chapel swooped to the nurse's rescue. She shooed him off, pointing him away towards one of the private medical rooms with Harris' medical file and a Betazed medical profile. She then snatched the hypo from Leonard's hand and grabbed the correct compound vial, slotting it into place and giving Harris, who had been sitting there rather bewildered while McCoy tore into his subordinate, the injection he'd come in to get for his allergies.

"You're a grump, Leonard," she said after she sent Harris on his way.

"We're on duty," he reminded her.

Christine just _smiled_ at him. "You're a grump, Doctor McCoy," she said sweetly, before she grabbed him.

"Insubordination," Bones muttered under his breath as Christine frog-marched him into his office and locked him in with the paperwork he had been avoiding. It was all he said, because really, he was glad to have an excuse to do something besides pace his Sickbay, waiting for that inevitable worst-case scenario.

It didn't, however, stop him from muttering heated invectives for an hour at everything in sight (mostly his desk knickknacks, which were nearly all from Jim). He did make it through three-quarters of the forms before the call came.

"Dr. McCoy to the transporter room."

"On my way," he said, slapping the comm off. He was already halfway down the corridor with his medkit before he remembered to comm Chapel, which he did at the intersection of the hallway. "You're in charge of Sickbay. Prep for incoming."

"Yes, Doctor," Christine replied, sounding remarkably unconcerned.

McCoy didn't spare it too much thought; Chapel was a professional after all. It didn’t really occur to him that the transporter tech had only called for him, or that he hadn’t sounded like it was particularly urgent.

He hit the transporter room just as the away team materialized.

"Who's hurt?" he demanded. "What happened?"

"Easy, Bones," Jim said as he stepped down from the pad. "We're all fine. The mission was a complete success."

"I wouldn't say 'complete,'" Nyota chimed in as she and the rest of the away team filed past.

"Standard post mission check-up then. All of you, Sickbay, five minutes ago," McCoy snapped, even as he couldn't quite get himself over the fact that an away mission had yielded him a hale and hearty Captain along with a functioning team. "And what does she mean by that?"

Nyota just laughed as she walked out the door, leading two Security team members and the transporter tech behind her.

"Weeeeeelll," Jim said. "They might have got the impression that _I_ was part of the trade agreement because I mistranslated a verb. But Uhura figured it out, explained it and now the Federation has a shiny new trade agreement, the best comm officer in the Fleet, and a dashing young captain with the best crew ever. Win-win."

Bones pinched the bridge of his nose hard. It was a reaction he had _a lot_ around Jim.

"Bones?" Jim asked, concern coloring his tone after a long silence from his friend.

"So everyone's fine?" Bones finally asked, still firmly trying to pinch away the headache that was gathering between his eyes.

"Yeah, buddy. All clear."

"No allergic reactions, punctures, phaser wounds, tiny scratches that will turn gangrenous if looked at wrong?"

"Nothing at all, Bones," Jim said, sounding like he was torn between laughing and knocking Leonard out for his own safety.

"Huh," he said slowly, finally removing his hand from his face and blinking slowly at Jim.

"You seem pretty tense, you know," Jim said as he took Leonard by the shoulders and steered him toward the nearest turbolift. "But don't you worry, Bones."

Jim shoved him into the lift and dialed in the deck for officer's quarters. He then returned his hands to Bones' shoulders, this time to massage them. Bones did his very best not to melt into a puddle as he felt relief swamp his system like a drug. He might possibly have whimpered though, to which Jim laughed.

"I've got talented hands," he said, and Leonard could hear the leer even if he couldn't see it. "And wow, you are _really_ tense."

Manhandling him out of the lift, Jim led Bones to the doctor's own quarters. It was as the door was shutting behind them that Jim smiled, all his teeth showing and definite intent showing his sharp blue eyes. "Really tense," he said as the door shut. "I can fix that."

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are loved!


End file.
